152 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



river, as well as in the neighbourhood of the 

 Macloutsie and Shashi rivers, and in many other 

 places throughout the valley of the Limpopo. 



In the following year, 1872, I visited Matabele- 

 land for the first time, and it is within my own 

 knowledge that at that time buffaloes were 

 still plentiful in many parts of the valley of 

 the central Limpopo. 



About this time the natives of every tribe in 

 South Africa were acquiring guns and ammunition 

 in immense quantities in payment for work in the 

 recently discovered diamond mines. The first 

 result of the acquisition of firearms by the natives 

 of the Northern Transvaal and the countries farther 

 north was the destruction of all the buffaloes 

 throughout the valley of the Limpopo to the 

 west of the Tuli river, and it is a well-known 

 fact that in a very few years after the disappear- 

 ance of the buffaloes from this large area of country 

 the tse-tse fly had also absolutely ceased to exist. 



Yet for years after the disappearance of both 

 buffaloes and tse-tse flies from the valley of the 

 central Limpopo and its tributaries, other game, 

 such as zebras, koodoos, wildebeests, waterbucks, 

 impalas, and bushbucks, continued to exist in con- 

 siderable numbers. I myself found all these 

 animals still fairly numerous in 1886 along the 

 Maghaliquain river, as well as on the Limpopo 

 itself and along the lower course of the Macloutsie 

 and Shashi rivers, and it seems to me that there 

 can be no doubt that after the buffaloes had been 

 exterminated the tse-tse flies gradually died out, 

 because they could not maintain themselves on 

 the blood of other kinds of game. 



Again, it is an historical fact that when gold 

 was first discovered in the Lydenburg district of 

 the Transvaal, in the early 'seventies of the last 

 century, the whole of the low-lying belt of country 



